


Seven Ways To Use A Knife

by Todesengel



Series: Mag7 Bingo [13]
Category: American Gods - Neil Gaiman, Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-04
Updated: 2012-04-04
Packaged: 2017-11-03 01:36:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 6,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/375627
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesengel/pseuds/Todesengel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Seven knives in Nathan's life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pen Knife

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt, "Lacerations/knife wounds" (which somehow turned out to be more about the knives themselves).

It was dark when they got off the riverboat in Cairo. Too dark to be seen, but too dark to see, and so when Nathan dropped the little scrap of paper that told them where to go next he felt so low in his spirits that he reckoned he might just up and die. But then Sampson did just that, with a rattling cough and a face of hopeless panic. 

"Hey!" Nathan called out to the man who'd rowed them ashore. "Hey! My friend's dying!"

The man came back, and in the tiny circle of light cast by his dark lantern, Nathan saw that Sampson was dead.

"Take him to Ibis," the stranger said. "They'll bury him properly."

"Where's that?" Nathan said, feeling more lost and hopeless than he'd ever felt before. 

"Come on." 

They carried Sampson the three miles to town, then a little way beyond, to a big house with a big sign that read IBIS AND JACQUEL beside a rope attached to a big brass bell. The windows were shut tight against the misty pre-dawn air and Nathan hesitated. The stranger did not, and he yanked on the rope, making the bell ring out loud in the silence. When it seemed no one would answer, he yanked it again, harder this time. He waited one heartbeat, then two, then shrugged apologetically at Nathan. 

"Looks like they ain't up yet. You just wait here. They'll see your friend buried right." The stranger looked down at Sampson's body and shook his head. "Shame," he said. "Such a shame."

Nathan looked down as well, and when he looked back up the stranger was walking away, fading into the mist. Nathan shivered – as much from the cold as from the company of the corpse – and thought about yanking on that cord himself. Maybe a third ring would open up the door. 

He was just reaching for the rope when the door opened and a thin man with gold-rimmed spectacles stepped out into the night. 

"Yes?" the man said, as though he were all too used to be woken in the middle of the night – and maybe he was, too, Nathan thought, for folks died all the time and he ain't never heard of nobody who liked to keep a corpse in the house. 

"My friend died," Nathan said, and he gestured at Sampson's corpse, as though it weren't already obvious to whom he referred. "I was told you folks'd bury him." 

"You were not misinformed," the thin man said, and he stepped aside to allow two other men – one almost as dark as Nathan, with an oddly hungry look to his eyes; the other a light, almost chestnut, brown, who cocked his head first to one side, then the other, when looking at the body on the ground – to exit the big house and pick up the body. Niggers like him, Nathan supposed, though he ain't never seen no nigger like them before, all high cheekbones and long, thin noses, and eyes that canted up ever so slightly.

"My associates will see to all the necessary arrangements," the thin man said. "I am Mr. Ibis. And you are?"

"Nathan," Nathan said, and then, because it'd been his name for most of his life, "Nathan Jackson."

"Canada bound, I assume?" Mr. Ibis said as he ushered Nathan into the big house – through the parlor and down a hall full of closed doors leading the Lord knew where and into a study where he settled himself behind a big desk, like a bird coming in to roost. He gestured for Nathan to take the seat opposite him and fussed around with the small objects on his desk – a quill pen, an inkpot, a small penknife, a shaker full of sand – before continuing. "We see so many folks headed that way. Alas, some do not make it, much like your friend."

"Sampson," Nathan said, casting a surreptitious look about the place, taking in the tall, dark bookshelves filled with tall, dark books, and the low banked fire, and the small brown cat sitting in the corner. "He was called Sampson." 

Mr. Ibis nodded – a neat, precise nod – and opened the large, leather bound book that lay on the desk before him. "And what was your relationship to him?"

"He was a friend," Nathan said, then added. "Sampson Jackson. That was his name." He fidgeted in the chair – it wasn't a comfortable chair at all, all hard, austere lines – then blurted, "I know he's just a nigger like me, sir, and I know I can't afford to pay you nothin', but don't sell him to an anatomist. He don't deserve that, don't deserve to be all cut up like that."

Mr. Ibis finished writing in his book, then looked over the rims of his spectacles at Nathan, and Nathan looked down at his hands, his fingers twisting in uncertainty. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the cat stretch, saw its whiskers twitch as though it were laughing at him, and that sent a curling fire of resentment through his being. Bad enough that he'd lived in fear every second since they first took flight; bad enough having to hold Sampson down, muffle his rattling cough, while they lay in the muck and filth of the oh-so-slow riverboat; bad enough that the only person he knew in this land – this land of freedom that seemed so inhospitable and alien to him – had died before he could be free…

Nathan looked up again, ready for a fight, but Mr. Ibis's brown eyes were calm and steady. He stood up, and the flurry of his clothes as he rose put Nathan in mind of the big cranes that used to come swooping down to rest upon the swampy ponds that surrounded the Master's land. He swallowed at the memory and reminded himself he didn't have no master no more; he was a free man. 

Mr. Ibis patted his shoulder once, twice, three times – light, fleeting touches, like the brush of some giant bird wing across his skin – then resettled himself behind his desk. "Do not fear for your friend," he said. "We at Ibis and Jacquel are here to usher the dearly departed to their just rewards, no more. I'm sure, as you say, your friend deserves a better treatment in death than he received in life." 

Nathan nodded, but slowly, not entirely sure he followed the strange man's reasoning. "I can't pay," he said again. 

"Never fear, never fear. I'm sure we can reach an accommodation." Mr. Ibis carefully sprinkled sand over the page in his book, then brushed the page clean with the end of his pen, before he shut the book with a heavy finality. He stood up and slotted it neatly away, then picked up another book – slightly thinner, and with a red leather binding – and another pen. He set it down on the desk and opened it to the first page, then trimmed off a stray curl of feather on his quill with his penknife. 

The small brown cat stretched again, then made its way to Nathan's lap, where it turned around three times before curling up and pressing its head insistently against Nathan's hand. Nathan stroked the animal – beautiful, in a strange, slightly exotic way, with large, pointed ears and big golden eyes – and felt a strange measure of peace fall over him like a blanket. 

"Now," Mr. Ibis said, but his voice sounded far away to Nathan, as distant as the whirr of a flight of birds. "Why don't you tell me about your life."


	2. Butter Knife

Nathan's stomach growled and he blushed at the noise. He was hungry, sure enough, the money he'd earned in Cairo nearly gone now, and he hadn't been able to find much in the way of food on his journey up to Elgin. Still, there was no call for his body to advertise that fact, even if it was being assaulted with the mouth-watering smells of fresh biscuits and sausages and eggs and coffee. Especially since he reckoned he could only afford a cup of coffee and maybe a biscuit with some bacon grease on it; had to hoard his money 'til he found himself a job. 

He picked up the menu to cover his embarrassment at his body's betrayal, and felt himself beginning to salivate at the food being offered. Biscuits and gravy; grits; cornbread; trout, caught fresh daily and grilled on premises; eggs; bacon; ham – all the foods he'd known in his youth, though he'd only ever gotten the leavings. He wanted to eat them all – eat until he was beyond full – but a glance at the prices, though modest, told him what he already knew. Coffee and maybe a biscuit as a treat. 

"Hey there hon," a smooth, contralto voice said, and he looked up into the smiling eyes of a woman just past the bloom of her youth but still attractive for all that. "You need some help decidin'? I can read you the specials if you like." 

"My name's Nathan," he said, snappish with hunger and her pitying assumption. "And I can read jus' fine." 

"Sure, hon, sure." The woman smiled, and her face became a thing of beauty. "Well, them specials are printed mighty small, so it might be worth listenin' to ol' Sally before you order. We got trout and corn bread and baked apples with cream fresh from the cow for dessert." 

"I'll just have coffee," Nathan said, and his stomach growled again in protest. 

"Hon, you ain't leavin' here 'til you've had one of my biscuits with some butter." Sally raised a hand to forestall any protest and Nathan noticed she only had three fingers left – the other two gnarled stubs, the permanent scars of an ancient punishment, no doubt. 

"I don't—" Nathan began, but Sally ignored his protest and disappeared into what Nathan could only assume was the kitchen. She emerged a minute later, carrying a plate piled high with biscuits fresh from the oven, and carrying a small marble bowl filled with rich, yellow butter. 

"I can't—" Nathan tried again, as he pushed the plate away as politely as he could, and from across the small restaurant – a neat, charming place for all its somewhat utilitarian furniture and décor – the other men began to hoot and laugh, an easy, free mocking that Nathan both reveled in and despised. 

"Ain't nobody ever said no to Sally!" one man called, and another added, "You just taste them biscuits boy!" A third called out, "Sally's got herself another!" and then descended into chortling laughter. 

The big man seated at the communal table next to him leaned over and said, in a rumbling whisper, "You best just go along with what she says. Whatever Sally Thompson wants, she gets. So I suggest you pick up that knife and start buttering."


	3. Hunting Knife

He got a job at the blacksmith – just shoveling coal and stoking the fire at first, but then Joe Smith started teaching him the trade. Simple stuff to start – nails and a new head for a hoe – and then as Nathan began to master that part of the craft, more complex projects: a new axe head for William Parsloe; a set of horseshoes and a fine new bit for John Hicks's horse; a brand new pan for Sally, who kissed Nathan on the check when he brought it to her home.

He liked the forge well enough – liked the rhythm of the work and the way it occupied his entire being. Mostly, though, he liked the heat of the forge. Canada was too damn cold for his Southern bones. The chill in his veins perplexed him; he would have thought the glow of freedom, the warmth of liberty, enough to withstand any Northern wind. He mentioned this to Sally as he escorted her to the barn dance on Saturday, wearing his brand new suit and sporting his brand new hat and feeling prouder than a strutting rooster. 

"Honey," Sally said in her rich, warm tones as she pulled him onto the dance floor, "there's only one thing other than hard work that keeps a body warm at night, and it sure ain't freedom." 

She laughed, and Nathan laughed with her, twirling her around and kissing her when she came back. They danced around and around, to the music of the fiddle and banjo and the hooting and hollering of the rest of the town. And when he tumbled Sally into bed, the two of them breathless and happy, he felt hotter than he'd ever felt standing before the forge. 

But the heat was gone the next day, though the flame of freedom still burned so bright within him; burned even brighter as he read the newspapers brought over the border and into the town. 

"There's trouble brewin'," he told Sally when she brought him his coffee. "A whole damn heap of it." 

Sally shook her head and pushed his newspapers aside, put one gentle hand on Nathan's arm – not so much possession as a pleasant reminder of last night and the way she'd gripped him as he came. "Well I reckon that ain't no business of ours. I ain't never goin' back, and the whole damn country can just go down in flames as far as I'm concerned."

"Ain't you got kin?" Nathan asked, a more personal question than he'd ever asked before. They didn't discuss life before Elgin – no one did. Nobody asked about the scars, or the journey, or the life they'd left behind. The hand on Nathan's arm tightened, painfully so, and although Nathan regretted the pain he didn't regret the question. 

"Left my babies," Sally said at last. "Left all my little babies behind."

Nathan nodded and reached up a hand to cover Sally's, but Sally had already released his arm, had already moved away and back into the kitchen, into her private domain. 

The following Saturday, John Hicks escorted her to the dance. 

Nathan didn't mind, much, though he missed her warmth at night. Sill, just 'cause he'd bedded her didn't mean she owed him anything, and she was still friendly enough to him when he went into her restaurant to eat and read the paper. But whatever chance of more there might have been was gone, and when he read that Abraham Lincoln was to be President, he knew it was time to go.

"You sure, son?" Joe Smith asked him, when Nathan told him he was going, and his eyes were full of worry. "Ain't gonna be nothin' but war, I reckon."

"That's why I gotta go, Joe," Nathan said, because he couldn't explain how reading about Lincoln had made the flame for freedom flare up hotter and more urgent than ever before; hotter than it'd been even when he'd been a slave. 

Joe Smith nodded, accepting if not quite understanding Nathan's feelings. He turned back to his forge and for a moment Nathan thought that this was to be the sum total of his time in Canada – a taste for butter with his biscuits, and a cold goodbye from a man he'd called a friend. Then Joe turned back and he held something sharp and deadly in his hands – a hunting knife with a long, curved blade of burnished steel and an elk horn handle wrapped in leather. A weapon, clearly, but one of beauty, and Nathan swallowed around the lump in his throat at the sight of the gift.

"Here," Joe said, handing the knife over, and Nathan saw the reflection of his inner fire burning in Joe's eyes. "You stick this in one of them white bastards for me."


	4. Scalpel

The first time Nathan almost died in the war was at Bull Run – the second Bull Run, in '62 – when he and Billy Jenkins were carrying a wounded man back to the tents. It was sheer dumb luck that Billy was out front, since normally Nathan took the lead. But the soldier on their stretcher had needed a tourniquet for his leg, and Billy didn't know how to do that proper-like, how to hold the wooden stick tight while holdin' onto the stretcher's wooden poles, so Nathan had taken the rear position and Billy got his head blown off by a cannon. 

The man on the stretcher screamed when Billy fell – called out in both pain and fear – and Nathan grunted hard as he tried to keep the man from sliding all the way into Billy's body, tried to keep the fall of the stretcher slow and gentle and as completely unlike the messy crumpling of his friend as he could. He forced himself not to think of anything except the needs of the moment: of strapping the wounded man tight to the stretcher using his and Billy's belts; of dragging his burden as carefully as possible across the churned up ground, and trying not to die in the process.

"Hey," he shouted as soon as he saw the tents. "Hey! I need some help!" 

He did not add _and my friend is dead_.

A white man – young and wearing a leather apron stiff with blood and other things – came out at his call, and directed another stretcher bearer to take up half of Nathan's burden. They carried the man to the end of the line of other soldiers waiting to be saved – past the rows of gut shot men, past the lines of the living dead – and Nathan felt oddly reluctant to leave his stranger behind. Billy was dead because of this man, and though Nathan knew that the universe didn't deal in justice, he still felt it'd be monstrous of the world if Billy's death ended up just one more meaningless loss of life. 

"You there," a sharp, imperious voice said, the vowels burred by a Massachusetts accent; it was the voice of a man accustomed to obeisance, and it took all of Nathan's hard won freedom to fight against the ingrained urge to round his shoulders and lower his head. "What are you doing?"

"Ain't sure, sir," Nathan said, keeping his back straight and his eyes on the approaching man – short and paunchy, and wearing a pair of dark-rimmed spectacles. "Don't know what to do without a partner to help me carry the stretcher." 

"Show me your hands." 

Nathan held his hands up, and the man – the doctor, a different one than before, but with the same blood-stiff apron – nodded in sour approval. 

"I suppose you'll do," the doctor said, then added, "You ain't squeamish about blood, are you?"

"No sir," Nathan said, as politely as he could, though he found it hard to keep the dubious questioning entirely out of his voice. 

"Good," the doctor said, pulling Nathan along into the hospital tent by sheer force of personality. It took Nathan a moment for his eyes to adjust from the brightness of the day outside to the slightly dimmer confines of the sweltering canvas tent, and longer still to fully understand what he was seeing. A soldier lay upon the operating table, his left arm flayed open, and though Nathan had said he wasn't squeamish about blood this was something else altogether – this was something fascinating and complex and oddly beautiful in its gory mess. "Now then, you just stick your finger in there and tell me if you feel anything." 

"Poke my finger where?" Nathan asked hesitantly. 

"There!" the doctor said, gesturing sharply with a lancet stained a rusty red from dried blood. "That hole along the brachial muscle. My fingers aren't long enough to reach the end and unlike the rest of these quacks I'm not about to go slicing into a man just to see if there's something to be found." 

Nathan looked down at the glistening wreck before him and, yes, there was a hole there, amidst the blood and twitching flesh. Nathan glanced at the doctor, then gently probed the wound with his finger. There was resistance, and then, suddenly, there wasn't, and all Nathan could feel was the slickness of blood. 

"Uh," Nathan said, struck suddenly by the absurdity of his situation, for never in his life had he imagined he'd end up feeling the pulse of another man's heart rush by so shockingly fast against his skin, "what exactly am I looking for, sir?"

"Bone, the bullet, anything that's out of place," the doctor said impatiently. "Come, come, I haven't got all day." 

Nathan probed further, feeling carefully, feeling for anything that he reckoned shouldn't be inside a human arm. Of course, he wasn't at all sure what a human arm should have inside it, and it wasn't until he had his finger buried all the way to the knuckle – for the wound seemed to open up to him as he searched, not a straight tunnel but one that curved away and around – that he felt the flattened edge of the lead shot, and the sharp spur of what may have been shattered bone. 

He pulled his finger out of the wound and looked over at the doctor. "I felt a ball, I think," he said, "and maybe some bone."

"Where?"

"Here, I reckon," Nathan said, pointing to a spot higher up on the soldier's arm, up near the shoulder. "But I ain't so sure."

"Hmm. Hmm." The doctor tapped the back of the lancet against the soldier's arm, a thoughtless gesture made while thinking. "Should probably take the whole thing off," he said, scowling. "But I do hate having to cut off an entire limb. Still, Larrey argues that it's better to remove the entire limb than risk anchylosis of the shoulder…"

The doctor trailed off, then nodded firmly to himself. "Yes, best just take it all off at once. Deltoid, then ligature, then through the bone and done." He looked up at Nathan and scowled. "Still here?"

"Yes sir," Nathan said, unsure of the way to express his fascination without sounding like a ghoul. But then again, he supposed he didn't need to explain, for the doctor smiled – just briefly – in a way that made Nathan think he understood the draw, the thirst for knowing. 

"Well," the doctor said, the sharpness of his voice not disguising his apparent pleasure. "Don't just stand there. Go make yourself useful, and fetch me a saw."


	5. Throwing Knife

It was the harness that caught Nathan's eye – the straps dyed a deep and pleasing red, the actual harness itself a lighter brown. He reached out and touched the thing, feeling calfskin smoothness, and thought about how it'd feel strapped to his body. 

_Comfortable_ was the only word his brain could come up with, and Nathan was slightly surprised as the thought. He knew he shouldn't be, of course, and he was far more comfortable with a knife than a gun. He had seen far too much of the kind of damage a gun could do, and not just to the enemy. A gun could misfire as easily as fire, and once a man ran out of bullets all he had was a lump of metal too spindly and expensive to throw, but not much good for anything else. 

A knife, though…

Well, Nathan knew a knife could heal as well as it could wound, and it seemed to him that right now what he wanted was something that could heal – not just his wounded soul, but maybe that of the world around him. And if anybody objected to him, well, Nathan reckoned he could learn to throw a knife straight in time. It couldn't be harder than learning the names of all the bones of the hand, or how to suture shut a vein, or how many drops of ether could be safely administered to a man, or how to draw out a tooth without leaving a stray piece behind. Hell, it might be easier than learning any of those things, since he wouldn't have Doctor Cooper breathing down his neck and hurling tin basins at him when he got things wrong; wouldn't have to carry dying men back to the tents under a hail of bullets, either, or worry about a passing cannon ball taking his head. 

He took the harness down from where it hung upon the wall, and added it to the small pile of goods he reckoned he'd need out West – just a set of second-hand clothing, a mortar and pestle that had seen better days and a frayed carpet bag to hold them both in; Nathan figured he'd go by stage coach for as far as his money'd take him, then just keep walking 'til he found a reason to stop, and he didn't need a whole lot of possessions weighing him down for that kind of a journey. Still, a fine leather harness and three good knives, and all for less than a third-hand Colt, was a hard bargain to pass up. 

"That old thing?" the shopkeeper said when Nathan brought his bundle to the counter. "I only put it up on that damn wall as a bit of decoration."

"It's not for sale?" Nathan asked, feeling more disappointed than he thought he would – or should – be. 

"Hell, I'll sell it to you if you want it." The shopkeeper flashed Nathan a gap-toothed smile and chortled to himself. "Never thought I'd see the day where a man'd take a knife to a gun fight."

"I ain't plannin' on gettin' into no fights," Nathan said, and the old man hooted with laughter.

"Anyway," Nathan said, when the man's mirth died down, "I reckon I best save my money – got a long journey ahead."

"Boy, you don't know the half of it." The shopkeeper tallied up the small pile of goods and shook his head. "Sure you don't want to buy yourself a gun? Ain't gonna find better prices the further West you go." 

"No," Nathan said, running his hands over the harness again. "I think a knife will do me just fine."


	6. Drawknife

"That has to be the ugliest damn pew I've ever seen," he told Josiah from the doorway of the church. "And I've seen pews made of nothin' more'n spit and stone."

"A church," Josiah began to say, in that deep, ponderous way of his that meant he was about to expound on some point of philosophy or theology – and once Josiah got going, he could keep going for hours. 

"A church is a house of God, Josiah," Nathan said. "And we're all just His guests. You don't want folks thinkin' God can't afford a decent seat for His guests, do you?"

Josiah grinned, easy and affable, and nodded. "You may have a point, Nathan." He gazed down at the pew before him – wobbly and lopsided and more likely to give a penitent a nasty splinter wound than provide him a comfortable seat upon which to contemplate the myriad wonders of God – and then looked up at Nathan, his head tilted slightly to one side. "I don't suppose you have another?"

Nathan rolled his eyes and took the drawknife from the toolbox Josiah left by door. 

"Buildin' a pew can't be any harder than puttin' a body to rights," he said, though he hadn't come in here with the intention of helping Josiah continue his renovations of the place. He'd just been restless, was all, and out of sorts with himself for no reason he could explain. He reckoned it had to do with Chris Larabee and the five other men who'd invaded his little town; reckoned that maybe it had more to do with Ezra and the way the man brought up all the things he thought he'd left behind. Not Ezra's fault, of course, except for the ways in which it was.

Josiah grinned back at him, still affable, but with a hint of some secret humor in his eyes. "As you say, brother, as you say." 

Nathan snorted and settled himself down before a thick oak plank, just the right length to be the back of a pew. He'd seen a drawknife before, of course, up in Elgin – watched one of the lumberjacks use it to debark a log and carve out the legs of a chair. And while he ain't never done it himself, he reckoned it couldn't be all that hard to do. It was just a simple application of force and care, and Nathan knew all about force and care.

After an hour, all Nathan had to show for his work was a pile of wood shavings, a noticeably thinner plank of oak, and a pair of sore arms. He glared down at the plank – lopsided, now, and without any sort of graceful curve like he'd imagined creating – and then at the drawknife. He wanted to blame the tool, but he knew that was foolish; no point blaming the instrument when it was the handler who was at fault. 

He glanced up at Josiah, not exactly expecting some witty remark or sly smile, but not holding out too much hope of escaping this debacle entirely unscathed. An oddly cryptic remark was the very least Nathan expected, and yet Josiah remained silent and focused on his own work, on the slow, patient sanding of the pulpit, each gentle stroke removing untold years of neglect. And maybe that was the point Josiah was trying to make, that even ugly old things could be made beautiful, given time and patient understanding – or it could just be Josiah was really that engaged in what he was doing; it was hard to tell with Josiah. 

_Still_ , Nathan thought, as he picked up the drawknife and ran it down the plank once more in an attempt to save what he'd destroyed, _I reckon I wouldn't have it any other way._


	7. Carving Knife

Nathan knew JD had something on his mind the minute the kid sat down at their table. He kept bouncing his knee against the bottom of the table, setting all the dishes to rattling, and twisting about in his chair, like he'd got a burr in his pants. 

"Son," Ezra said at last, after JD's restlessness caused him to nearly drop his coffee in his lap, "perhaps you'd be so kind as to tell us what's bothering you instead of continuing to act like a man who's just sat down on an anthill." 

"Well," JD said, "I just realized it's gonna be Christmas in a few weeks."

"That does seem to happen," Josiah said. "Every year, in fact."

JD made a face and went on, sounding more like the kid who'd jumped off the stagecoach three years ago than the man he was starting to become. "And I was thinkin'—"

"Well, that's as damn near a miracle as any virgin birth I've ever known!" Buck said, laughing despite the way JD glowered at him. 

"Like I said," JD went on, in a louder and more resolute tone, "it's gonna be Christmas in a few weeks and I was thinkin' that we ain't never really celebrated it out here." 

"Sure we have," Buck said, and he stroked his moustache in the way Nathan had come to learn meant that he was thinking about some story – most likely only a quarter true, and possibly involving some sort of manger, or even a donkey. If he'd been closer to Ezra, he'd have bet a dollar that at some point Buck would mention shepherds at least once; or, well, more likely sheep. "Why last year, me and Miss Ida—"

"Aw Buck, I'm tryin' ta be serious here!" JD said, a vaguely petulant whine entering his voice. 

"Just say what's on your mind, JD," Chris said, though Nathan wasn't sure if he was trying to get whatever it was JD wanted over with or if he was trying to forestall Buck's story. 

"I was just thinkin' that we should have a Christmas dinner is all," JD said, a little huffy and annoyed. "I mean, I know we don't get a proper Christmas down here, since it don't snow or anythin', but that don't mean we can't do the other stuff." 

Nathan hid his smile behind his cup of coffee; only JD would think Christmas needed snow. 

"Ah yes," Ezra drawled. "Christmas dinner. Roast beef and turkey and ham; white bread and pickles; and, of course, the Christmas pudding."

"Exactly," JD said, nodding excitedly. "Me and Ma would get together with the rest of the servants and there'd be a goose and a ham and chestnuts and stuffing and gravy and a _huge_ plum-pudding for desert, with all kinds of cookies and the like. And we'd go caroling and there'd be the big tree in the main house, and a little one for the rest of us, and me and the other kids would have a snow ball fight – though I guess we can't do that here – and I'd get a whole piece of chocolate all to myself!" 

"Stilted conversation, endless homilies on family, the inevitable church trip – with the dour sermon and the same trite tales – and, of course, the tedious rounds, calling on people you cordially hated," Ezra said. He shook his head and put down his coffee cup. "No, thank you. I prefer our tradition of ignoring the date altogether." 

"I dunno," Vin said, slowly. "Way JD talks, it sounds mighty nice. I reckon most of us at this table ain't ever had that kind of a Christmas. And I reckon I ain't the only one who'd like to know what that's like." He grinned at JD and added, "Though I 'spect the folks here'd be mighty glad if we didn't do the carolin'." 

"You volunteerin' to cook for us, Vin?" Buck asked, grinning wide. 

"Hell, you know Vin's cookin' only goes as far as bacon and beans," Chris said. "And anyway, where're we gonna hold this thing? Here?" He gestured at the saloon, and Nathan reckoned he had a point; way JD talked about the thing, way he remembered the event happening up at the master's house, Christmas wasn't supposed to be held in such a public place. "Ain't gonna be my place, that's for damn sure."

"I reckon we could get a table big enough for all of us to sit 'round in my place," Nathan said, not really considering his words. "If I moved the bed over, that is." 

"Great!" JD said, and Nathan laughed and he didn't think any more on the conversation until Buck and JD showed up at his door a week before Christmas and carrying a small keg of Nettie's brew between them. 

"Boys, I know I said I should start chargin' y'all for the healin', but this ain't what I had in mind," he said as he let them in. 

"Nah," Buck said, laughing through his mustache. "But me 'n JD figured it be best if we brought it here." He patted the keg, and added, "We thought 'bout storin' it in the church, but reckoned it wouldn't last 'til Friday if we did." 

Nathan snorted and grinned at the pair. "Boys, it probably wouldn't last 'til tomorrow if you left it with Josiah." 

JD beamed, and then he and Buck were bounding down the stairs outside Nathan's clinic, already arguing about something else. Nathan stared at the keg for a minute, vaguely wondering why Buck and JD hadn't taken it to the boarding house – or asked Inez to store it in the saloon's cellar – but then shrugged and moved on to more important things. 

He thought about the cask again the next day when Josiah hailed him in the street, saying, "Got me a nice bit of lamb from Gloria."

"Ain't it a bit out of season?" Nathan asked, more to keep the conversation going so he could take a discreet look over Josiah; man didn't seem to be deep into his spirits, but he was a powerful sight too cheerful to be entirely sober. 

"Oh I reckon the Lord will forgive us for our early celebration."

Nathan nodded and walked on, and didn't think anything of it until Vin showed up a few days later, carrying a brace of ducks in one hand and a half-dozen quail in the other. 

"Vin," he said warily. 

"I know they ain't geese or turkey, but I reckon birds is birds, right?" Vin said, dropping the birds in Nathan's lap and leaving before Nathan could say anything to him. Nathan frowned at his retreating back, but then Patrick Morecombe came rushing into his room babbling something 'bout his son swallowing a pin, and that took up more or less the rest of Nathan's day so that he didn't think about his friends and their strange gifts of food until Ezra approached him outside the saloon, right before he was about to go in for dinner, with a neatly written recipe in hand and that lofty look that meant he was trying to pretend he was above such paltry things as sentiment and emotion. 

"Mother's best recipe for plum pudding," he said, handing it to Nathan. "I know for a fact that it was responsible for at least one of her marriages." 

"Uh-huh," Nathan said, and looked down at piece of paper in his hands, and thought of the birds Vin had given him, and the keg of booze sitting in the corner of his rooms. "Ezra, I reckon y'all've somehow got the wrong impression." 

"We're still using your rooms for this feast, correct?" Ezra asked, and Nathan stared at him for a moment before shaking his head and heading inside. He sat down at their usual table and glared at his friends, trying to figure out the most polite way to say they were all crazy. 

"Y'all seem to think," he said at last, "that just because I'm lettin' you invade my home for a night, that means I'm gonna be cookin' the goddamn meal too."

JD frowned, his brow furrowing, and he looked at Nathan with something close to anxiety in his eyes. "You mean you ain't?"

"'Course I ain't," Nathan said. "I ain't no cook."

"It _is_ customary for the host to provide the feast," Ezra said, and Nathan didn't even have to look to know that Ezra was grinning his sly, mocking grin – though who he thought he was mocking with his mama's best plum pudding recipe in hand Nathan didn't know. 

"Then y'all can just find somewhere else to eat," Nathan said, as resolute as he could be in the face of JD's clear disappointment. Still, he reckoned he knew his friends pretty well by this point, and he was sure someone would come up with a solution; and if not, Nathan knew he'd eventually cave and cook the damn meal himself, since if he didn't then he'd be spending all of Christmas Day dealing with six grown men moaning from the belly ache that came from eating badly cooked food. 

"I guess I c'n take them birds to th' smokehouse," Vin said at last. 

"It'd be damn shame to let that lamb go to waste," Josiah said a moment later. He smiled up at Nathan and winked before saying, "And of course, I ain't got any other use for all that clay." His smile broadened, and he waited until JD had started to open his mouth, his face a picture of confusion bordering possible horror, before adding, "Clay for the oven, I mean."

"Hell, me and JD already made our contribution," Buck said. "And at least it ain't somethin' you gotta cook first."

"No, you just gotta make sure you don't go blind after drinking it," Nathan said.

"This mean we're still celebratin'?" JD asked. 

"We better be," Chris said. "'Cause even if we ain't, I'm still gonna make you all eat all the goddamned chestnuts I had to collect." 

JD beamed widely and Nathan laughed and when he had all his friends gathered 'round his table, a table weighed down by Vin's birds and Josiah's lamb and Chris's chestnuts and his own modest contribution of cornbread and greens – collard greens he'd grown himself, and he was damn proud of the sight of them on that table – he laughed again at the simple joy of sharing a meal. It wasn't so different from their normal dinners together, save for the fact that they had to water down the booze, and yet there was still something wholly different about this time, this meal, these men. 

"Here," Chris said, handing him a long carving knife with a handle worn smooth by time. "Reckon it's your house so you should do the honors." 

Buck laughed, loud and brassy, and said, "Hell, Chris, don't you know it ain't right to lie to a man on Christmas?" He winked at Nathan and added, "Last time Chris tried to carve a bird, we ended up with nothin' more'n gristle and bones."

Nathan shook his head and stood up, then pause, knife poised over the first of Vin's ducks. He looked down the long table to where Josiah sat at its opposite end. 

"Should we say grace first?" he asked, unsure of how these sorts of things were supposed to go. 

Josiah made a small, thoughtful noise and closed his eyes for a moment, and all down the table the boisterous merriment grew somber and still; JD even sat up straighter and combed his fingers through his hair. 

"Praise the Lord and pass the gravy," Josiah said at last, and he grinned his wide toothy grin as Ezra barked out a startled laugh. 

"I knew I liked you for a reason," Ezra said, and that seemed to be signal enough for the rest to start talking and laughing again. Nathan shook his head and smiled so wide his cheeks ached from the strain, then bent to the task of carving the meal while the noise of his friends filled up all the odd corners of his home.


End file.
